Activision gets serious: it has banned more than 19,000 players from Call of Duty competitive play

Call of Duty has always had a problem with cheaters. All online games do. But due to the game’s popularity, it has always been particularly visible and prominent in Call of Duty. This is something Activision has taken very seriously. They are now demonstrating it with very specific figures: they have banned 19,000 players in one week. Why? Because that is the number of players who were cheating in the newly opened ranked queues.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 opened its ranked queue, or competitive play, on November 20th. To access it, you must have previously won 50 online matches. This serves as a filter: you need to have a commitment to the game and a certain level of skill to play with those who want to compete. But none of that has been enough to prevent thousands of people from trying to cheat in the game during the first week. Nor has Activision managed to stop them from continuing to do so.

As mentioned on their Twitter account, around 19,000 players have been banned since they opened the ranked queue. This has been thanks to the sweeps they conduct every hour, looking for potential cheaters, using AI to identify those players who are cheating.

A lot of technique to avoid cheaters

How is this possible? Thanks to the 50 online matches required to access ranked. This gives them a match history that, along with tools to monitor past matches, makes it easy for them to identify cheaters. That, combined with tools that allow them to identify players using VPNs to jump between servers and players who intentionally do not play the game to gain more experience, is allowing them to efficiently sweep cheaters from the game. Or at least it seems so.

These massive bans in the past have been at the expense of some innocent players. Especially those who have special needs, such as the disabled. That’s why it will be necessary to see if it doesn’t end up causing the same problems. But at least for now, Activision is doing a good job of keeping Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 free of any cheaters.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 DOWNLOAD

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is a highly anticipated action game that immerses players in a world of espionage and high-stakes heists. Set in the tumultuous 90s, the narrative echoes other iterations of the iconic Call of Duty: Black Ops series, but with deeper spy elements and political intrigue.